GEED 005 Purposive Communication Modules (2024) Unit 1 PDF

GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) UNIT I (Re)Visiting and Disambiguating Common Concepts About Language INTRODUCTION Whatever else people do when they come together---whether they p...

GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) UNIT I (Re)Visiting and Disambiguating Common Concepts About Language INTRODUCTION Whatever else people do when they come together---whether they play, fight, play, or make automobiles---they talk. We live in a world of language. Language is a complex system of communication that encompasses a variety of core concepts, including phonetics, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It also enables individuals to express thoughts and emotions, and shape cognitive processes, such as memory and problem- solving. Language is deeply intertwined with cultural practices, influencing and being influenced by the values, norms, and traditions of a society. As a marker of cultural identity, language fosters a sense of belonging and continuity, while also serving as a vital tool for social interaction, facilitating the exchange of ideas and fostering social cohesion. Understanding the multifaceted nature of language allows us to appreciate its profound impact on both individual cognition and collective cultural dynamics. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Define language and its core concepts. 2. Analyze how language influences and is influenced by cognitive processes, cultural practices, and social interactions. 3. Appreciate how language serves as a marker of cultural identity and a tool for social interaction. Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) LECTURE DISCUSSION WHAT IS LANGUAGE? When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the human essence, the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man. - Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (1968). - CORE CONCEPTS OF LANGUAGE Language goes beyond mere sounds or words with meanings (Binus School Simprug, 2024). It is the main means through which people communicate, typically occurring within a social context (“Language as a Tool for Communication and Cultural Reality Discloser,” 2012). Through language, people interact socially and emotionally, expressing friendliness, love, anger, and pain (Van Berkum, 2017). Language allows ideas to be conveyed and tasks to be completed, such as telling a story, providing information, complaining, or seeking assistance (“Language as a Tool for Communication and Cultural Reality Discloser,” 2012). Effective communication involves more than just understanding the words being spoken; it requires comprehending how those words are used by the speakers (Robinson et al., 2024). Oral language is something that students naturally pick up through social interactions, which usually begin before school and do not require explicit instruction (Brown, 2008). As they expand, this evolution keeps happening. Students require direct teaching, including lessons on language structure, to use language for learning to read and write (Sanako Blog, 2023). Teachers must understand language since it is the foundation of reading and literacy instruction. Instructors need to encourage linguistic Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) acceptance and understanding in classes when both students and teachers speak different native tongues (Nishanthi, 2020). Teachers must also be adept at teaching pupils with a range of language proficiency (Nugroho, 2018). Origin of Language Many theories of language origin exist (Yule, 2006). Two of the more popular hypotheses (beliefs) concerning the origin of language are the Divine Creation Hypothesis and the Natural Evolution Hypothesis (Academic Studio, 2022). The Divine Creation Hypothesis states that language is the gift of gods and humans were created with an innate capacity to use language (Cristiano, 2023). According to this hypothesis, language and society are inseparable. Wherever humans exist, language exists. The second hypothesis is the Natural Evolution Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that humans evolved to have more intelligence, which made language invention and learning possible (Ferretti et al., 2018). The simple vocalizations and gestures gave way to a system of language, perhaps within one or two generations. According to the Natural Evolution Hypothesis, as soon as humans developed the capacity for creative language, the next step would have been the development of a specific system of forms (words) with meanings. Characteristics of Language Universal properties of language are categories or rules that all human languages have in common. Language is a systematic, human trait, and everyone using the language must understand the rules associated with the language. All languages contain the elements of phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. These elements address different components of the language, particularly sounds and sound patterns, word Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) structure, and sentence structure. All languages also use word categories such as nouns and verbs. All languages have the characteristics of productivity (can add new words as needed), and variation (according to the situation or purpose of use. Language productivity refers to the speakers’ ability to create new words and add modifiers to phrases, creating long sentences that express specific ideas. As time moves on, new words are introduced to describe new technology or ideas. Every language operates in a speech community in which language variation is evident among the speakers. Other specific characteristics of language include: Language is a means of communication. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their ideas, beliefs, or feelings. Language gives shape to people’s thoughts as well as guides and controls their activity. Language is a discrete symbolic system. This means that language is a system of spoken or written symbols (sounds and words) which people, who belong to a social group and participate in a culture, communicate. Language makes use of clearly distinguishable and identifiable symbols (sounds and words). One can clearly distinguish between /s/, /I/ and /t/ in the word ‘sit’. When a speaker wishes to communicate, he or she must use the language system that is understood by the listener (Mukherjee, 2016). Language is human. Language is a purely human method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols (Sapir, 1921). Language is a form of social behavior. ‘Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols’ (Hall, 1968). Language must be acquired and learned; it does not pass from parent to child genetically. Learning a language is made possible in society. A human child learns to speak the language of the community or group in which he or she is placed. Language is arbitrary. “Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates”. This means that there is no natural Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) connection between sounds and symbols, or between symbols and their referents. Language is dynamic. Language keeps changing at all the levels-sounds, words, word meanings, and sentences. Language is changing, and growing every day, and new words continue to be added to it in the course of time. Each generation modifies and changes its languages to adapt to changing needs and demands of the people who use it. Language is thus open-ended, modifiable, and extendable (Mukherjee, 2016). Language is innate. The presence of the language acquisition device (LAD) in the human brain predisposed all normal children to acquire their first language in an amazingly short time, around five years to birth. Language is universal. It is universal in the sense that all normal children acquire a mother toughie, but it is also universal in the sense that, at a highly abstract level, all languages must share key features of human languages. THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY CENTRAL IDEA PROPONENT Behaviorist Children imitate adults. Their correct utterances are reinforced Skinner when they get what they want or are praised. Innateness A child's brain contains special language-learning mechanisms Chomsky at birth. Cognitive Language is just one aspect of a child's overall intellectual Piaget development. Interaction This theory emphasizes the interaction between children and Bruner their caregivers. Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) 1. Behaviorism The behaviorist psychologists developed their theories while carrying out a series of experiments on animals. They observed that rats or birds, for example, could be taught to perform various tasks by encouraging habit-forming. Researchers rewarded desirable behavior. This was known as positive reinforcement. Undesirable behavior was punished or simply not rewarded - negative reinforcement. The behaviourist B. F. Skinner then proposed this theory as an explanation for language acquisition in humans. In Verbal Behaviour (1957), he stated: "The basic processes and relations which give verbal behavior its special characteristics are now fairly well understood. Much of the experimental work responsible for this advance has been carried out on other species, but the results have proved to be surprisingly free of species restrictions. Recent work has shown that the methods can be extended to human behavior without serious modifications." (cited in Lowe and Graham, 1998, p68) Skinner suggested that a child imitates the language of its parents or carers. Successful attempts are rewarded because an adult who recognizes a word spoken by a child will praise the child and/or give it what it is asking for. Successful utterances are therefore reinforced while unsuccessful ones are forgotten. 2. Innateness Noam Chomsky published a criticism of the behaviorist theory in 1957. In addition to some of the arguments listed above, he focused particularly on the impoverished language input children receive. Adults do not typically speak in grammatically complete sentences. In addition, what the child hears is only a small sample of language. Chomsky concluded that children must have an inborn faculty for language acquisition. According to this theory, the process is biologically determined - the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain linguistic information at birth. Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) The child's natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech and the child's brain can interpret what s/he hears according to the underlying principles or structures it already contains. This natural faculty has become known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky did not suggest that an English child is born knowing anything specific about English, of course. He stated that all human languages share common principles. (For example, they all have words for things and actions - nouns and verbs.) It is the child's task to establish how the specific language s/he hears expresses these underlying principles. For example, the LAD already contains the concept of verb tense. By listening to such forms as "worked", "played" and "patted", the child will form the hypothesis that the past tense of verbs is formed by adding the sound /d/, /t/, or /id/ to the base form. This, in turn, will lead to the "virtuous errors" mentioned above. It hardly needs to be said that the process is unconscious. Chomsky does not envisage the small child lying in its cot working out grammatical rules consciously! 3. The Cognitive Theory The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget placed the acquisition of language within the context of a child's mental or cognitive development. He argued that a child has to understand a concept before s/he can acquire the particular language form that expresses that concept. A good example of this is seriation. There will be a point in a child's intellectual development when s/he can compare objects with respect to size. This means that if you gave the child several sticks, s/he could arrange them in order of size. Piaget suggested that a child who had not yet reached this stage would not be able to learn and use comparative adjectives like "bigger" or "smaller". Object permanence is another phenomenon often cited in relation to cognitive theory. During the first year of life, children seem unaware of the existence of objects they cannot see. An object which moves out of sight ceases to exist. By the time they reach the age of 18 months, children have realized that objects have an existence independent of their perception. The cognitive theory draws attention to the large increase in children's vocabulary at around Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) this age, suggesting a link between object permanence and the learning of labels for objects. 4. Input or Interactionist Theories In contrast to the work of Chomsky, more recent theorists have stressed the importance of the language input children receive from their caregivers. Language exists for the purpose of communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction with people who want to communicate with you. Interactionists such as Jerome Bruner suggest that the language behavior of adults when talking to children (known by several names most easily referred to as child-directed speech or CDS) is specially adapted to support the acquisition process. This support is often described as scaffolding for the child's language learning. Bruner also coined the term Language Acquisition Support System or LASS in response to Chomsky's LAD. Colwyn Trevarthen studied the interaction between parents and babies who were too young to speak. He concluded that the turn-taking structure of conversation is developed through games and non-verbal communication long before actual words are uttered. The Role of Language Language has many functions within society. Language can be descriptive, evaluative, emotive, evocative, persuasive, interrogative, directive, performative, and recreational (UoPeople, 2024). 1. Descriptive. When language is used to describe factual information or provide descriptive information about a situation or object (e.g., She usually wears a beautiful, hand woven, Ethiopian scarf; or, the girl drove the car down the road,) Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) 2. Evaluative. When language is used to make a value judgment (Cepollaro et al., 2021). This type of language expresses opinions (e.g., Drinking alcohol seriously affects health; or, the coffee ceremony was nice,). 3. Emotive. When language is used to express emotion (e.g., I am disappointed by her absence today; or, I strongly agree with you,) (Lindquist, 2021). 4. Evocative. When language is used to evoke an emotional response in an audience (e.g., Let’s stand and work together to eradicate illiteracy from our country; or, this is important for our country’s future,) (Child, 2023). 5. Persuasive. When language is used to persuade someone to accept an idea, agree with a perspective, or act in a certain way (e.g., We should keep forests very carefully, because they are homes for wild animals,). 6. Interrogative. When language is used to elicit information. This type of language requests information without necessarily using questions. (e.g., They will tell us why they refused to accompany us; or, I am waiting for your answer). 7. Directive. When language is used to tell someone to do something (e.g., Take these pills twice a day,) (UoPeople, 2024). 8. Performative. When language is used to constitute an action (e.g., I sentence you to 10 years in prison,) (Drid, 2018). 9. Recreational. When language is used for fun or enjoyment, such as in the telling of a joke (Jiang et al., 2019). Language allows people to form a connection with one another and with their community. It also allows individuals to establish their identity. Core Concepts of Language Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how sounds function within a particular language or languages. It focuses on the abstract, cognitive aspects of sounds as opposed to their physical properties, which are the domain of phonetics. Phonology examines how sounds are organized in the mind, how they interact with each other, and how they contribute to meaning. Phonology provides a framework for understanding the Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) mental representation of sounds and the rules governing their use in language, offering insights into the cognitive processes underlying speech production and perception. Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure and formation of words. It analyzes how words are constructed from smaller units of meaning called morphemes. Understanding morphology is crucial for comprehending how words are formed, how they function in sentences, and how they change to express different meanings. Morphology provides insight into the complexity of language structure, revealing the rules and patterns that govern word formation and usage. It bridges the gap between phonology (the study of sounds) and syntax (the study of sentence structure), contributing to a comprehensive understanding of linguistic theory. Syntax is the branch of linguistics that studies the rules and principles governing the structure of sentences in a language. It examines how words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences, and how these structures convey meaning. Understanding syntax is essential for understanding how sentences are constructed and how different elements within a sentence interact. Syntax provides a framework for understanding the rules and patterns that govern sentence structure, offering insights into how meaning is constructed and conveyed in language. It bridges the study of individual words (morphology) and larger units of meaning (semantics and pragmatics), contributing to a comprehensive understanding of linguistic theory. Semantics is the branch of linguistics that studies meaning in language. It focuses on how words, phrases, and sentences convey meaning, and how these meanings are interpreted by speakers and listeners. Semantics intersects with other areas of linguistics such as syntax (sentence structure) and pragmatics (language use in context), but its primary concern is the meaning itself. Semantics provides a framework for understanding how meaning is constructed and interpreted in language, offering insights into the cognitive and social dimensions of communication. It bridges the gap between the abstract, theoretical aspects of meaning and the practical use of language in everyday life. Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics that studies how context influences the interpretation of meaning in language. It focuses on how speakers use language in social Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) interactions and how listeners interpret utterances based on context. Pragmatics extends beyond the literal meanings of words and sentences to consider how meaning is shaped by situational, social, and cultural factors. Pragmatics bridges the gap between the literal meanings of words and the dynamic, context-dependent nature of language use. It highlights the importance of context in shaping how we interpret and produce language, emphasizing that communication is not just about what we say, but also how, when, and why we say it. Sociolinguistics is the study of how language interacts with society. It examines the ways in which language varies and changes in different social contexts, and how social factors such as class, gender, age, ethnicity, and region influence language use. Sociolinguistics explores the relationship between language and social identity, power dynamics, cultural norms, and social institutions. Sociolinguistics provides valuable insights into the complex ways in which language and society interact. By studying these relationships, sociolinguists can contribute to a better understanding of cultural diversity, social inequality, and the dynamics of language change. Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive processes and mechanisms underlying the acquisition, comprehension, production, and use of language. It intersects psychology and linguistics, exploring how humans understand, produce, and learn language, as well as how these abilities are represented in the brain. Psycholinguistics provides valuable insights into how language operates in the mind, offering a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes that make human communication possible. By exploring these processes, researchers can better understand the complexities of language learning, comprehension, and production. Link to Video Recording 1. What is Language?| How Language Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjgurdgwmoM 2. Language: The First 5 Years of Life of Learning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u49uLLCUlEk Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT GEED 005 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION MODULES (2024) Written by Rene Laurente G. Reyes, MAEd, Annabelle A. Gordonas, Ph. D., Jinky De Jesus-Reyes, Ph. D., Jesellie Pastolero-Tripoli, LPT, MAT, Imelda C. Altovar, Ph. D., & Mary Joyce Z. Bautista, MAELT